You’re Doing 10K Training Wrong, And It’s Keeping You Stuck

[00:00:00] Alright, last two oh meters. Let’s get this moving. Please keep moving through, but don’t obtain squires. Finish. Didn’t mean to get that. We must be at the finish line of a 10 K. I shouldn’t have raced. I didn’t taper. I was way under trained and undercooked. Eight weeks out from my half marathon. A race and the woman behind me.

[00:00:23] Had a rougher day than I did. I used this race as a training tool, not a best time trophy hunt. And in the next few minutes I’ll show you how you can actually do both. In this episode, I’ll be going over why your 5K time is the secret weapon for faster 10 K. Yes, 5K. Stick with me. The exact training structure for sub 60 minutes, sub 50 minutes, and sub 40 minute 10 K.

[00:00:46] The traps that blow up most 10 K attempts and the easy fixes. Plus a free training plan that maps out. All of this week by week, no guesses at paces and hoping, and if you want to download that right now, you could just get that right at the QR code here or the link below or in the description of the episode, wherever you’re watching.

[00:01:04] I’m Daren D Lake certified run coach, and almost 30 years lifelong runner. I started doing 10 Ks in the low 42, 43 minute range through smarter training. Specifically by focusing on my 5K speed. I got my 10 K down to low 37 minutes. And I haven’t even really focused on it yet, and I think I can probably get closer to 35 minutes if I really focused and followed all this stuff.

[00:01:28] I’m talking about. Over the last 14 years, I’ve been researching this stuff, talking to experts and running experiments on myself so that 100,000 other self-coach runners can cut through all of the noise on the internet and get 1% better. Each day. Alright, let’s just start this. I’m not nervous, it’s just simple workout, so, so the 10 KAKA quarter marathon, no one says that because it’s actually not a quarter more like 23.6% of a marathon anyways.

[00:01:59] Why is this race actually. So good. Alright, so in the uk, United Kingdom, London, Britain, 10 K is one of the most popular standalone race distances. Right behind the 5K Park run phenomenon, 5K Park run started there. They’re huge there. I’m in Australia, Sydney, Australia, and they’re quite big here. They haven’t really caught on in the States, but globally, the 10 K is up there.

[00:02:21] A lot of people wanna do the 10 k ironically, even though five Ks are everywhere, 5K fun runs. It makes total sense. You’ve done a few five Ks, you start feeling good and you go. Will two five Ks back to back equals a 10 K six mile race. Why not? It’s basically that it sits perfectly between the 5K and the half marathon.

[00:02:39] It’s short enough to recover from a week or so, 10 days, and then you can get back in your training and it’s long enough to actually feel like you’re building something and when you race it, it’s like, okay, I raced for 40, 50, 60 minutes. 70 minutes. You are like, I feel like I did something more than almost any other distance.

[00:02:55] It rewards, I think both smart training and smart race day pacing. And that’s like a little foreshadowing. We wanna talk a lot about pacing in here. Get both right on the same day and you’ll run your best time. Here’s something worth knowing. A bit of the run science. We’ll just dabble in it really quick before we get into the training protocols and the mindset and what we need to do.

[00:03:15] The 5K and 10 K share very similar energy demands. Both are heavily aerobic and both respond to the same training. That’s exactly why 5K and 10 K Pros train together and race both distances in the Olympics and just out. You can see elite runners, they’re like, oh, I did 5K and then two weeks later I did 10 K.

[00:03:32] It’s like the same exact energy systems used. Here’s a quick run science nerd. Break research puts the 5K at roughly 84% aerobic energy contribution. That means that you’re using mostly oxygen, which is AKA, the easy running. Uh, but there’s a, I put quotes there for a reason. The 10 K pushes that aerobic.

[00:03:50] Contribution. So we’re using oxygen somewhere around 90%. And let’s take it even further with the estimation for most recreational runners. ’cause pros are running 26, 28 minutes. Yes, they’re running that fast. That’s the world record. 29 minutes. Usually most recreational runners 40, 50, 60, 70 minutes with 10 K.

[00:04:09] So it might even be closer to 95% aerobic that shift. It sounds small, but it is not. It means that our training needs to be. Aerobic. It needs to be more in zone two and even zone three is okay. Alright, so actionable task for you. Pull up your last 5K time, ideally from the last six to eight weeks. Do it right now.

[00:04:28] Pause this video. That number tells you more about your 10 K ceiling than you might think because you can’t run a fast 10 K unless you run a fast 5K. You can’t run a fast 5K unless you run a fast two miles. You can’t run a fast two, maybe you don’t want one. You get it. You gotta go faster for the distance right before it.

[00:04:43] That 5K number is perfect to use in my free 10 K training plan that I’ve built for you because that free training plan puts everything in this episode into a real week by week structure for the use. 10 weeks speed sessions, long runs, taper obviously easy runs, lots of short, easy runs, medium didn’t easy runs, long Runs that are easy, and also a cool bonus.

[00:05:04] You’ll get the one better run metric scoring system built right. Into it, and I’ll talk about that actually later in this episode. You can log your score in the notes column after every hard session, long run and race. It tracks your effort, performance, and decision making across your whole trending block.

[00:05:19] I’ll talk about how there’s three variables in there. It’s intelligence, it’s output, what you actually did, and it’s effort based, and it’s really, really cool way of thinking about a framework. It’s a way better way of judging if you actually did well versus just looking at your time and going, I didn’t ruin my best time today.

[00:05:33] Even though you might have actually done really well in a lot of other areas. Get the link to that training plan right here at the QR code or below in the link in the description or the show notes, wherever you’re watching or listening to this. And while you’re here, tell me your current 10 k time in the comments plus your goal for the year.

[00:05:49] So it should be two times my, right now, my current 10 K time is probably in the 38 minute range. Uh, high 30 eights. And my goal this year is to touch 37 again. So let me know that I think all this stuff commenting and sharing this episode out and subscribing and liking and all that stuff, it will help another self-coach runner find this video and they can hopefully run a fast 10 k.

[00:06:09] And I also wanna see where people are starting from. I think it’s pretty cool. So here’s something that you may not have connected from shorter races. Here’s the 5K connection, uh, which again, I think is going to be your hidden ceiling. Remember I was talking about how if you wanna run a fast 10 k, you gotta run a fast.

[00:06:24] 5K. The 10 K is not a random time. It’s directly tied to your current 5K speed. There’s a formula called gel’s or riels endurance equation, and it’s been around since 1981. That is 45 years. Wow. And it’s what every major PACE calculator is actually based on the VDOT calculator, which I use a lot of. You can plug your 5K time in and multiply it by 2.08.

[00:06:47] And you got your predicted 10 K. It’s not magic, it’s just math and physiology and how your body works. This is also seen if you use my beloved VDOT calculator made by Jack Daniels and I did a whole episode on the VDOT calculator and how to use that right up here. Go check that out. Or there’s a link below in the show notes or description.

[00:07:06] So in real terms, are you people that are chasing times out there, wanna run a sub 50 minute 10 K? You need around a low 23 minute 5K. Wanna run a sub 40 minute? 10 K. You need sub 1830. Yes, we’re moving now. That is fast. Here’s why. That is actually dope news. Improving your 5K automatically raises your 10 K ceiling.

[00:07:26] Again, they’re, they’re very, very close to each other. As far as energy system demands, you’re not fighting two separate battles. The one lever 5K moves both the 10 K and you generally get fit. Because five-year training is actually way easier than half marathon, so you’ll get fit faster. I started doing 10 ks again in the 42, 43 minute range.

[00:07:44] I really wasn’t tracking time Back then, I was using like, uh, old school watch, but not because I wasn’t training. I was training. I was just stacking aerobic miles without building speed. This is, uh, a huge issue I had. I did too much low heart rate base training. MAF zone two training. I did too much of it.

[00:08:02] Once I got really specific and dialed in my 5K, my 10 K just followed. And yes, I hear the slow twitch aerobic base people in the back saying, you still need big volume. You do. But training like a marathoner for a 10 K is overkill for most runners. There’s a middle ground. Even running this one Undertrained, my 5K Fitness was doing the heavy lifting in the first half.

[00:08:25] That’s the point. The training below isn’t just 10 K training, it’s 5K informed. 10 K training. It’s like 5K training on crack, on nitrous, whatever you wanna call it, supercharge. That is the difference. So what does that actually look like week to week? Alright. The training plan that works, again, you can get that below for free, but I want you to understand why.

[00:08:45] The plan works and not just what to do. If you get the why, you’ll actually stick to it and you become a better self-coach runner. On average, you want about 10 weeks to be genuinely ready for a 10 K, not four, not six 10. If you can do 1216 by having a four to six week base period before this. Phenomenal.

[00:09:03] But I know not everyone can do that. But again, the plan is built around the 10 weeks, four runs per week, plus one to two strength sessions. If you can get into, please, please do that. Even home workouts are fine. The four run types we’ve got VO two max sessions. This is where the ceiling goes. Up. This is your aerobic ceiling, slightly faster than your current 5K fitness pace.

[00:09:25] This is, this is a huge asterisk, not your goal pace, your current fitness, where you’re at. That’s a huge, huge distinction. More on VO two max at the video up here or below in description. If you don’t get that link in YouTube or you’re on somewhere else, the next run is Temple Runs zone three, comfortably hard, around six outta 10.

[00:09:45] Effort building to a seven, seven and a half at most. It should feel like you can go for an hour, builds lactate threshold. It comes in around week four of my training plan becomes a regular feature by definitely week five. More on temple runs at the video up here or below in the description. Next type of run is easy runs and I’m gonna throw in strides in there, even though it’s kind of a different workout.

[00:10:09] But strides run, easy runs is great. This is your zone one, zone two, bread and butter. Everyone needs to develop the system. It’s genuinely conversational. Like you should be able to talk at least 7, 10, 12 words and then take a breath. You’re not talking like me right now and talking for like, like I’m not doing the Eminem, you know, Busta Rhymes, sort of whatever fast rapper.

[00:10:29] You like j Cole. You’re not, you’re not doing that. Everyone goes, oh, you’re not in zone two. ’cause you’re taking a breath every seven to 10 words whenever I’m recording and it’s like, no, no, no, I am in zone two. Like you still have to take a breath though ’cause you’re not like sitting around. It’s not zone zero.

[00:10:42] Alright, so again, this is conversational. It’s should feel easy. Should feel like you can run for 3, 4, 5 hours, 20 to 35 minutes. Finish with four to six strides. And if you can’t run easy, which if you are a new or an even intermediate runner, you’re like, oh, I can’t keep my heart rate in zone two for a lot of reason, guess what?

[00:11:02] I got episode on that to help you out. Go up here. It helps you figure out how to keep your heart rate low and running in zone two. Check that out or link below. Now you wanna incorporate and build into finishing these easy runs with strides. I like to build up to about six or eight after about four to six weeks, but you can start at two to four strides and then anywhere from 10 to 20 seconds and you wanna get it at around 90%.

[00:11:26] Effort. So the first five seconds, you go from 50% to 90%. Then you hold for three or four seconds at 90% and then you come down gradually and you slow down. It’s not a sprint. That was a quick TLDR on strides. And I know most runners skip them ’cause they’re like, I don’t know what to do. What are strides is a sprint, blah, blah, blah.

[00:11:41] Don’t worry. I did a deep dive on that. Up top or below I actually show you how to do strides with me. Running strides are huge because they actually. Keep your fast twitch fibers awake and it’s actually like a strength session in a way. And it’s also great for the final kick of races. That’s when your fast twitch fibers turn on and help you go, go, go, go.

[00:12:01] So you can hopefully run your best time. And the last type of run that you’ll need to run a fast 10 k is the long run. And this is another usually easy-ish run, zone one, zone two. Uh, you will touch some zone three in there as you get more. 10 K specific. ’cause a lot of people will be in their zone three for 10 K.

[00:12:18] Uh, pros can actually run in zone five for the whole 10 k. It’s wild, even half marathon pros. But that’s another conversation. Uh, US amateurs that are not running 26 minutes are not doing zone five, and we definitely need to work on zone three and we’re gonna start these long runs at about 50 or 60 minutes, depending on how fit you are.

[00:12:35] And then you wanna build roughly 10% per week. And you’ll get between 90 and two hours, depending on a lot of factors. I would cap most runners at two hours. The aerobic base develops fatigue resistance. It’s steady, its patience, and it’s very, very essential. You cannot skip long runs. Recovery weeks are built in two weeks, four and seven of the training plant.

[00:12:55] They’re not optional. You’re not being lazy. That’s when the adaptation happens. You absorb all the hard work. From your training. Training equals work plus rest, not work, plus work. If you’ve watched more than one or two of these, you know I say that a lot and I’ll keep saying it. Week eight is your reality check eight by one K at goal 10 K race pace.

[00:13:14] And if you can’t hold that pace through the session, either the goal needs adjusting or you need more time, the workout doesn’t lie. And that rest in between the eight by one K repeats is short ’cause you don’t have a rest in the race. And then week 10 is race week, your volume drops. We’re gonna taper a week before you stay sharp by keeping the intensity.

[00:13:30] Up. So your speed stays at wherever you wanna be. You’ll feel ready, trust the process. Here’s a rule for interval speed session days. Finish those speed sessions feeling like you had one or two more reps in you. This is a huge hack. More people should do this. If you smash yourself so hard, you can’t properly run for three days.

[00:13:46] You went too hard, dial it back. Alright, so with this first K, the goal is to hold four oh fives, which is about like 6 45 minutes per mile. 4 0 5 minute Ks.

[00:14:03] And then I ease into it. That’s the negative split strategy. So you got the training plan and how that will work. Again, get that for free, the link below. Uh, but race day is a different skill and you need to understand and learn that and train that. You’re gonna train your mental and your emotions. You’re gonna have discipline.

[00:14:19] So here’s some traps to avoid in training and racing. Two things that blow up most 10 K attempts for your best time. And they’re actually fixable trap one and racing going out too fast. The adrenaline at the start line is real, especially if you haven’t raced a lot. And the first kilometer or even first mile, that’s 1.6 Ks always feels slow at goal pace.

[00:14:40] And that’s exactly where we wanna be. We’re gonna actually negative split this. A lot of run coaches that are more advanced will say, no, you should have exact splitting. I think exact splitting is very, very difficult to do for one new runners. And two, if the course has hills, which most 10 K runs will have hills, turnarounds, uh, all these other factors that you have, heat, wind, et cetera, humidity.

[00:15:00] So negative splitting gets you a bit more of reserve so you can have in the end of the race. So what I do is break the 10 K up into thirds. The first third is kilometers. One through four or up to the first two miles, and that’s when we’ll go slightly slower than our goal pace and our goal time about anywhere from 10 to 15 seconds per kilometer, or 15 to 20 seconds per mile.

[00:15:20] Yes. Slightly slower. And then between five and eight Ks we’re actually gonna hit our goal. Pace and we’re actually gonna be slightly faster here and the effort is gonna increase. So again, that’s gonna be miles three and four, and then the last third miles five and six or kilometers, uh, eight, eight and a half through 10 is gonna be where we actually go slightly faster than goal pace.

[00:15:41] We’re gonna make up for the time that we had, and this is where you can just let loose. And in your training you’re actually gonna do something similar to that. And this is how we execute a best 10 K race day. Well just hit a, uh, traffic jam.

[00:15:59] I had slow down because, excuse me, sir. I decided to put everyone here, but they don’t wanna close the roads. And then the second trap, which is a training. Which actually will affect your racing is easy. Runs that aren’t easy, you run too much in the gray zone. Your training feels like work and some low zone three training is actually useful because it’s still aerobic.

[00:16:22] Even proper zone three and high zone three. That’s threshold and that is actually where you want to be, but just a little bit of it in and out. Too much of that raises injury and burnout risk without giving you the full benefit of showing up. For a hard run and actually running hard ’cause you feel tired or running easy and actually absorbing the training and building up your aerobic system and the mitochondria and the capillaries and all that stuff.

[00:16:44] Those are the traps. Alright. The fix for both traps is to use effort and even heart rate in your training, in your racing. Not pace you like. Oh, especially early on in the uh, 10 week training block, like weeks one to five and six. Really train zone one, zone two. For easy and effort, go. This is an easy run.

[00:17:03] I can talk. Ignore Strava. I know, I know. Don’t worry about it. It looks like you’re going backwards. Ignore the fitness and freshness and you won’t get as many kudos because you’re not killing it. Ignore all that stuff. We are three Ks in. Just had a nasty traffic jam, but treat it like an interval. This is how it’s lot of time.

[00:17:20] Race, super windy. Feeling settled. Heart rate was a bit high than I thought it was gonna be. Um, shock up nerves. I took a tiny caffeine this morning. Look at this view though.

[00:17:37] Alright, one more thing, and this is one that is massively underestimated by almost everyone, myself included, up until three or four years ago, recovery, recovery, I did a whole deep dive from recovery up here. Go get that or below in the show notes or the episode description if you’re watching somewhere else.

[00:17:53] But to be honest. The adaptations from your hard sessions don’t happen during the session. It happens during recovery. Again, training equals work plus rest, not work. Plus work. The run is the stimulus. It breaks you down and the sleep and the rest, and the nutrition is where the fitness actually gets built.

[00:18:10] Three things to remember. Sleep, seven to nine hours. Do not negotiate it. You know how much you need to feel good without coffee in the morning. Easy runs actually easy. I’ve already said that it’s gonna be true until the end of time all the science says it. So, uh, either get a proper heart rate monitor because your watch might be actually reading too high or just train for 6, 8, 10, 12 weeks easy.

[00:18:31] And I promise you’ll come out easy. Taper week. You wanna cut down volume 30 to 50%, about seven to 10 days before the race. And you still want to keep sharp and still do race pace efforts in there, but you’re letting your body. Come in fresh and fit and ready. The fitness is there. Trust the process. Don’t do a whole bunch of work three or four days out, even two days out doing panic training that won’t help you.

[00:18:53] It’ll probably hurt you. The recovery week is in the plan, weeks four to seven. They’re called deload weeks. They’re therefore a reason. Please, please, please respect the recovery week. Now look at this. I got Andrew here. He yells at me every run I do and I never hear. And he thinks I’m ghosting him, but I’m not.

[00:19:09] Fuck how you feeling? Put your hands up as you come across and as you’re moving, please keep moving through as you’re walking all the way down into hydration. Didn’t to get that?

[00:19:28] Thank you.

[00:19:32] So we’re gonna break this down with my, uh, one better run metrics. So we got intelligence, I would say three out of three. Output, which is pace power two outta three. And uh, input would be two outta three. I almost wanna say one outta three, but I’ll give myself a two outta three. So that is, uh, that’s seven.

[00:19:56] I’ll take seven. I’ll take seven. That’s what you get. This is basically time shot, which is three, and it was free and I got a medal for my kid. Input is effort. How hard did you actually try? Output is pace and performance, what the clock said, and intelligence. How smart were the decisions? Did you adapt pace?

[00:20:12] Well manage the race. There’s a total out of nine, so it’s three points for each. Seven is solid. Eight or nine is absolutely exceptional. You get a gold star and if you score below six, you got a lot of things to fix in the next training block. Use it after. As many races as you can. Definitely after time trials and even hard sessions, what gets measured, gets managed, and not just the clock, the whole picture.

[00:20:34] You can still learn a lot and get better from a race where you didn’t run your best time. I know it’s crazy. Start locking that debrief of those metrics, those three metrics in the point system into the last column of that training plan that I gave you or anywhere you want. If you don’t use the training plan, that’s fine.

[00:20:49] Strava, private notes, notepad notion. Whatever you want to use, whatever’s easiest. If you haven’t grabbed the free 10 K training plan that I’ve talked about probably six times in here. Go get that the QR code on the screen or link below in the show notes. It’s a week by week structure, all the paces, et cetera, and that metric scoring sheet for you.

[00:21:06] You also get signed up. For my free email course, injury Prevention Habit Building, running a Better Life, living a Better Run, however you wanna do it, it helps you actually learn how to self-coach yourself and not again, get injured, not burn out, five minutes or less. Six lessons. Over six days right in your inbox.

[00:21:25] You don’t have to go anywhere else. I talked a lot about five Ks in here, so if you want to understand how 5K and 10 K training actually overlap and over twine and where they differ, you can watch that video right below. If you’re on YouTube or in the show notes of whatever podcast player you are listening to or watching, even if you’re on Spotify, there’ll be a links up in there.

[00:21:44] Happy 10 K Training and Racing Peace.